"Well, as far as we know, not having seen them since yesterday," answered Dick. "You see we're not regular ranchers or cowboys yet, we're just learning."
"One need not be told _that_!" sneered Del Pinzo, who had followed our heroes and the two professors down the slope.
Professor Blair turned and looked sharply at the half breed. Then the scientist, speaking, said:
"Del Pinzo, perhaps you had better return and watch that the next blast harms no one. We would not want an accident."
The half breed hesitated for a moment, and then murmured:
He turned back up the hill, Dick and Nort continued down it toward the tents.
"Picket your horses and come in," invited Professor Wright, as he held open the flap of what was, evidently, the private dining tent of himself and his college companion. "I'll have Sing Wah fix you up a little feed."
"This is mighty kind of you," murmured Dick, as he and his brother sat at the folding camp table and ate hungrily.
"And now all we want is to be put on the trail to Diamond X," said Nort, as they finished. "We'll let the cattle go, for the time being."
He rose to leave the tent, followed by his brother, but, as the boys neared the flap a man, who, they remembered, had been called Silas Thorp, interposed his ugly bulk in front of them.
"Don't be in a hurry to leave, boys," he sneered.
"Because we'd like to keep you here a while," Thorp went on. "I guess the professors would like to have you accept their hospitality a little longer."
"Is this true?" cried Nort. "Are we prisoners?"
"Well, that is rather a harsh word to use," said Professor Wright. "But we feel we must detain you--at least for a while!"
Nort and Dick admitted to one another, afterward, that at first they believed the two professors to be joking. They imagined that the cultured scientists were merely indulging in a bit of fun, from much of which they were necessarily barred while in the class room. But a sharp look at the faces of the men who were at the head of an expedition, conducting a mysterious search, showed the boys that earnestness was the keynote.
"You--you're going to keep us here?" questioned Dick.
"For a while, yes," said Professor Wright, and there was more snap and decision in his voice than before.